And We All Fall Down
by ConversationKiller111
Summary: America's civil war rages on. Men and vampires, vampires and men... the two were destined to meet—and fight. Henry Sturges has long since given up ideas of peace, of a happily-ever-after. But sometimes, all it takes is meeting the right person... and a little magic, even through the barriers of time. A new piece steps on the chessboard, one who can win the war: the Queen. Henry/OC.
1. Prologue

_Fire._

Fire burned the hairs on his skin, singed the flesh until it boiled and popped. Muscle burned, blackened, shriveled into nothing. His femur showed, the white of the bone shining like a freshly polished sword, a new sword, one that had never seen the blood of battle. He opened his mouth to scream. No sound. Nothing but a choked gurgle, all he could manage. _This isn't how it ends,_ he thought, one final attempt at defiance, at shouting _"fuck you!"_ to destiny. _She couldn't have been right, she couldn't have, it's not possible, she was just a crazy bitch, oh God, the bitch the bitch_ —

But right she was. About everything. The fire raged and roared, flames gusting up, up, up to the roof of the barn. Blood boiled and evaporated, the stench a mixture of charred gristle and molten steel. He put all his weight on his other leg, the unbroken one. The muscles attempted to piece themselves back together as his heart pumped fresh blood to replenish what was lost. His body was trying to heal itself—but the flames were stronger. Faster. For every ounce of flesh that grew back, they burned through three. For every chunk of bone that snapped back into place, two more cracked off. And the blood... his heart couldn't keep up.

 _That bitch... that bitch._

She'd only reiterated what someone else already told him years ago. First, it was the old fortune teller: Mother Murphy, if he remembered correctly. Mother Murphy... she was nobody. A gypsy. Some old, crazy broad who made her living spitting up stories and legends and lies. A woman who ate until she gorged. A woman who drank until she pissed whiskey. She didn't know the future, didn't know _his_ future. She would sooner spin a tale than tell the truth, would sooner attempt to scare rather than appease him.

 _And yet... and yet..._

The other one—not Mother Murphy; God knows she wasn't Mother Murphy—was different. He'd thought her beautiful at first; beautiful, brilliant, and a desirable challenge. But she was a challenge that he failed. And she _knew_ him. Even before they met, she _knew_ him. How, he couldn't say, but she did. And even as he'd leveled the pistol at the back of his target's head, she'd haunted him. For what she'd said before he climbed the stairs to the box, before he'd fired that ball through his target's thick skull, were the same words Mother Murphy spoke all those years ago:

 _"You're going to meet a bad end, Mr. Booth."_

And now, as he stood in a burning barn, one leg fractured and burnt to an unrecognizable mass of crispy sinew, John Wilkes Booth finally understood. He understood even before he sensed the other man's—

( _no, that's not right; he's not a man at all_ )

—presence. He understood before he turned around, before he met the black eyes. Black eyes... _eyes like mine._

 _("You're going to meet a bad end, Mr. Booth.")_

And so he was... And so he did.


	2. Spell Error

The crowd shouted outside her bedroom window, college students high on marijuana and one another's energy. Mostly freshman who lived on campus in dorms, nice dorms, dorms that didn't have bunk-beds, but individual beds. Freshman who didn't know the meaning of the words "student loans." But there were some sophomores and juniors mixed in as well, sophomores and juniors who payed tuition, housing, meal plans out-of-pocket, whose parents covered expenses with a platinum debit card. They intermingled, ignoring that one rule, the Golden Rule, the one that kept them from talking to one another since High School. And as they marched—no, not marched; marched was too weak a word; _rioted_ —down the road, down Grand Avenue, past the University, right where it intersected with Union Street, they repeated one phrase like a catchy song whose lyrics don't make sense:

 _"Make America great again!"_

Olivia sat on her bed, knees pulled up to her chest and her back resting against the wall. The power had long since gone out, leaving her room shrouded in the heaviest of darkness—save for the one candle she'd lit just an hour ago. Wax melted down, down, down on to the smoothed, flattened rock she used as a base so it wouldn't ruin her dresser. Her door and window were locked. She kept herself as far away from them as physically possible. Crowds—especially bigoted crowds—were dangerous things. The police weren't there; of course they weren't. They were too busy 'keeping the peace' at a peaceful protest, full-fledged riot gear equipped like medieval armor. They were too busy readying their fiberglass shields, their batons, loading their guns with rubber bullets that wouldn't kill—never kill, can't have a lawsuit now—but God would they hurt. They were too busy firing teargas into an unarmed procession, teargas that stung, blinded, burned. And at the end of the night, they would haul the wounded off to jail—not the hospital, God knew they couldn't take them _there_ ; who would pay the medical bills? Certainly not the insurance companies, no sirree.

The candle flickered once. Twice. Didn't go out. And of course it didn't—the protective spell she'd cast over it would last well into the morning. It also ensured that the flames would not jump further than a millimeter away, if that. She wasn't supposed to have candles in her apartment. Her landlady thought candles meant things, unspeakable things, unorthodox things. In some ways, she was right. When signing the lease a solid three years ago, Olivia had smiled and agreed to every term. A place to live meant more to her than lighting a few candles. But then she rediscovered magic—Druidic magic, the magic of her grandfather, of her ancestors—and candles became her livelihood, her solace. They became the only connection she had left to her grandfather.

Car alarms blared as the rioters smashed windshields, windows, and taillights. Olivia sighed and tilted her head back until it tapped the wall. Much as she wanted to sleep, she knew nothing would be better in the morning. This? _This_ was the new tomorrow. And there was nothing she could do about it. How could she? A small voice of contradiction in a sea of bigotry would be swept away in harsh waves. And everyone knew the only voice that mattered had already spoken—and awakened a long-buried skeleton of hatred and oppression.

Olivia hugged her knees tighter to her chest. She wanted to open her window and scream. She wanted to scream something along the lines of: _"No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!"_ But her breaths and hands trembled, her eyes watered, so any form of opposition lay just beyond her reach. Those words were for _others_ to shout, not her. Brave, brilliant people whose throats didn't constrict when they wanted to speak. Strong, resilient people who would never— _never_ —curl in on themselves and allow hatred to run them over. People with voices, with direction. And Olivia _had_ those things; they were simply in her head, hidden under layer upon layer of nerves and overthinking. Unreachable. Unrecognizable.

She glanced toward the candle. The flame, steady now, stared back at her: a constant in a mass of incongruities. She watched it awhile, until she saw a black spot when she closed and opened her eyes. Outside, the rioters roared and raged for a cause that belonged in the past, a cause that would spell out the future for years to come. Olivia liked to consider herself the type that tried to see the best in everyone, to see Good. But sitting there on her bed, fetal position, tears in her eyes, the makings of a panic attack, she realized what she'd denied for so long: it was gone. It was gone, or at the very least, too twisted, too overshadowed. And she didn't think it would ever come back.

A rock—a big one—crashed through her window. It collided with the candle hard enough to leave a large dent in the wax, but didn't knock it over. The protective spell was strong, stronger than Olivia had thought when she'd cast it. The flame flickered as wind from outside blew into her room—cold wind, wind laced with a hint of snow. She didn't dare walk to her window to cover the hole, didn't dare leave the relative safety of her bed. _"Leigheas,"_ she whispered, and a few shards of glass pieced back together. It wasn't much—stars only knew her magic wasn't strong enough to fix the entire thing—but it was enough to keep some of the chill out.

 _I need to get out of here..._

She reached over her bed toward her desk, where an assortment of leather journals resided. The one she wanted was old—red leather-bound with a Celtic heart carved into its cover. It had belonged to her grandfather. When she turned eighteen, he'd given it to her, claiming that _"the most important magic is in there, my little cookie. Don't lose it."_ And she hadn't; she'd just forgotten about it, not quite scoffed, but not exactly embraced. She didn't understand—never had; probably never would.

A page was bookmarked with the tiniest piece of paper that fell into her lap when she opened the journal. Frowning, Olivia looked at the spell. An old one, likely dating back to the original druids, one written in Ogham. She glanced at the paper in her lap. A translation—crude and new.

 _'And when the day is dark and lost,  
_ _A spark o'er the fields_  
 _Of time will melt the Winter's frost;_  
 _A chasm split to heal.'_

It was her grandfather's handwriting, and she could practically hear him read it aloud as she read it in her mind. The ingredients for which it called were relatively simple: a pinch of thyme, a handful of dried rose petals... a drop of the caster's blood. It was the last one that made Olivia pause and set the journal down on the bed. Herbal magic was one thing, but _blood_ magic? Her grandfather had always warned her of its power—power usually abused. The one thing she couldn't quite figure out, however, was that the ingredients were basically those of a standard love spell. Though the incantation and drop of blood were new, the premise stood out to her.

She glanced at her ruined window again. The rioters hadn't migrated to a new area yet, and she didn't think they would. _Maybe the world could use a love spell_ , she thought as she stood and went about gathering the ingredients. Although she couldn't explain _why_ she wanted to try this particular incantation, she couldn't deny that she felt a certain pull toward it. Call it intuition, call it chance. She wanted to cast the spell and she wanted to cast it _now._

Once she'd grabbed all the ingredients, save for the drop of blood, she mixed them in a stone bowl and held a match ready. She chanted the lyrics for the spell. Wind, stronger than any she'd ever felt, gusted in through the hole in her window. The candle's flame flickered, then went out. Her room plunged into darkness. And yet nevertheless, she continued, pricking her finger and allowing a tiny hint of blood to fall into the bowl. On the final syllable of the poem, she ignited the match with her thumb and dropped it.

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 **A/N: Right, so, I know this chapter is a little short, but it's just the exposition. We'll get into the real stuff in the next update. Thank you for reading! Comments of any kind (save for criticism/flames that aren't constructive) are always welcome and appreciated. Have a good rest of your week, everyone!**

 **-Conversationkiller (Nopride)**

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 **REVIEW RESPONSES:**

 _ **Clockworksalsa:**_ **Thank you so much! Have a great week!**


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